Effects of practice of serial tests of attention in healthy subjects

Abstract

The effects of practice on the serial performance of auditory and visual attention tasks were investigated in 10 healthy volunteers tested at 2 to 4 weekly intervals over eight test sessions using a battery of psychometric tests. Subjects as a group showed an ability to significantly (p = .05) improve their performances over time on all tests except for the Simple Reaction Time and Symbol Digit Modalities Test, the latter demonstrating a trend towards improvement (p = .07). Improvement when it occurred was almost uniformly linear and on tests such as the Pegboard and Stroop, was still discernable at the eighth session. On tests such as Paced Visual Serial Addition Task, floor effects were noted after five sessions and no further improvement was possible. In general, younger subjects tended to make fewer errors, perform quicker and improve for longer periods than their older counterparts. The results indicate that on tests of attention, healthy subjects have the ability to significantly improve performance with practice and this may extend over as many as eight discrete test sessions. The implications for neuropsychological research are discussed.

Dawn simulation light impacts on different cognitive domains under sleep restriction

“…The test battery comprised the Motor Tracking Task (MTT), Digit Symbol Substitution Test (DSST) [23], Paced Visual Serial Addition Task (PVSAT) [24,25], Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) [26], Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT) [27], Simple Reaction Time Task (simRT) and Visual N-back Task (1,2,3-back) [28]. For detailed information about each test, please see Table 1.…”

“…Feinstein et al [24]; Nagels et al [25] Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) Sustained/divided attention task in which inattention and inhibitory processing can be measured separately. Both types of performance depend on the frontal cortex It's a computer-based task, used here as a Go/NoGo task, which requires participants to monitor single digits presented rapidly on screen, and respond to each one that appears (called Go target), except for a particular pre-defined digit (called NoGo target).…”

Effects of Artificial Dawn and Morning Blue Light on Daytime Cognitive Performance, Well-being, Cortisol and Melatonin Levels

“…Beginning 30 min after wake-up time, participants completed a 25-min test battery every 2 h. The battery included five cognitive tasks for sustained attention and executive functions: Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART; Robertson et al, 1997), Verbal 1-, 2-, and 3-back (N-Back1-2-3; Kubat-Silman et al, 2002), and Paced Visual Serial Addition Task (PVSAT; Feinstein et al, 1994). To quantify the magnitude of the light effects on global cognitive performance, a composite score was computed by normalizing the data for each test separately (i.e., SART, PVSAT, N-Back1-2-3) and averaging it to yield a composite score for each volunteer for each 2-h period according to Viola and colleagues (Viola et al, 2007).…”

Differentiation of Cognitive and Motor Aspects in a Digit Symbol Substitution Test in Anorexia nervosa Patients, before and after Weight Restoration

“…Matching times, but not writing times, were significantly shorter at T2 than at T1. The practice effect that has been described in the literature for the SDMT at retest after periods of 2-4 weeks [29,34] seems to reflect a cognitive learning effect.…”